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41970 Sutton <suttons@e...> 1998‑04‑23 David Suton's Bio
Roots of a galoot:

My great grandfather was a stone mason, and my dad¹s dad taught building trades.
   My father was a salesman, but a chronic do-it-your-selfer. He passed   a lot 
of this on to me.

When my grandad died I got two things to remember him by: a 10² drawknife and a 
UNION Bailey #5 hand plane. My dad told me that the grooves on the bottom had ma
de that plane special somehow, but he was at a loss to explain why.

My mom¹s dad had a serious woodworking machine shop where he spent much of his r
etirement making sawdust and nick-nacks with power tools.

I¹ve been working with wood in small ways ever since I can remember, cobbling th
ings together, carving. In my teen years I carpentered some, worked for a cabine
t maker, cement mason, brick mason, the works.

Why Hand Tools

In recent years my woodworking has mostly involved making things I need out of #
2 pine and restoring cast-off furniture I find on the curbs and alleys of Chicag
o's northern suburbs. Now I¹ve come to a point where I want to learn to make nic
er things out of better wood, with tight joints and   beautiful surfaces. I got 
fed up with the beginning of every project being, ³well, first go out and drop $
800 on a jointer² or ³first build a router table². I started asking myself how o
n earth people ever got things built before the advent of power tools and sandpa
per.

Six or seven years ago I helped an elderly neighbor clean out his garage. In ret
urn he gave me a beat-up cabinet maker¹s bench that had been left in the garage 
when he bought the house. That was a good start.

I¹ve always been good at fixing things, and I enjoy making things, so hand tools
 are a natural: First I get to fix them up, then I get to make stuff with them. 
One of my most gratifying experiences in recent memory was getting my several pl
anes restored and sharp and using them, first scrub then jack then smoother, to 
thickness a piece of scrap. WOW. Then I used a fillister plane to put a little r
abbet in it. Now I¹m totally hooked. With hand tools I can see and feel the proc
ess. When you use a power router what¹s there to watch? It¹s violent, dusty, and
 always a little edgy.

I¹m not really a tool collector, but I¹m outfitting my shop and I have a ways to
 go . I¹m in the acquisition and learning phase. Oldtools is a great education a
nd resource, and I¹m happy to be here.

My Other Life

I¹m originally a Hoosier, but I now live in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Ch
icago with my wife Lynntia, a dog and two cats. I¹m a photographer, and Lynntia 
and I run Sutton Studios, a commercial photography studio making a name for itse
lf with artful black & white portraits of dogs (no kidding-write me for samples)
. For what it¹s worth, I¹ve got a BA in German Literature (speak/read/write flue
ntly) from UCLA. My other hobby is bonsai gardening. To me it¹s like a woodworki
ng partnership with living trees.



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